


Mithridates, he died old

by shellcollector



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bad Puns, Blood, Canon Era, Happy Ending (kinda sorta), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kissing, Multi, Post-barricade survival AU, Serious Injuries, Soppiness, Suicide Attempt, as much as the basic premise allows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 06:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6318391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellcollector/pseuds/shellcollector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt was "Drinking, puns, and general shenanigans with Grantaire, Joly, and Bossuet". This is what you had in mind, right? :D</p><p>
  <i>Lesgle’s conscious suddenly of how alone they are, a little island of three in a great ocean of night, but then he sneezes, which rather undercuts his melancholy.</i>
</p><p>Grantaire, Joly and Bossuet survive the barricade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mithridates, he died old

**Author's Note:**

  * For [15Acesplz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/15Acesplz/gifts).



Sometimes he becomes conscious of Joly’s smallness. In bed, holding him, a warm bundle of limbs. Putting an arm around Joly when he’s nervy, and suddenly noticing the narrowness of his shoulders. And now, covering Joly’s body with his body, becoming Joly’s armour against a barrage of gunfire. Trying to look dead. It’s not hard.

He’s counting Joly’s breaths, trying not to wince at the pain in his own chest, and watching for an opening. All he can see is a forest of uniform trousers and polished, military boots, steps crisp against the pavement. This is bad. They need to get out of here, and it dawns on him that he has no plan for this. He’s never been a strategist. His plans fail without exception, and all the good things in his life came unsought, with a sudden grace.

Like this one: amid the gunsmoke and legs, he sees a man stumble out of the Corinthe’s splintered door. He can’t see the face from this angle, not without craning his head, but he knows that stumble like his own hands.

Grantaire’s walking too slowly, he thinks. Not running, as he ought, or hiding, as he ought still more. He weaves, instead, between the running feet, like a child forgotten at a party. Lesgle’s holding his breath for the moment when he falls, but it’s as if, even now, Grantaire’s not recognisably a part of this, as if he escapes shooting by seeming have taken a wrong turn. Which, in a way, he has.

Lesgle wills him in their general direction, but that never works and anyway he gets distracted by a sneeze growing at the back of his nose. Joly’s cold, which has been brewing in him for more than a day now, is starting to become insistent. It’s hard to pretend to be a dead man while sneezing loudly.

He tries all the old tricks: pressing his tongue onto the roof of his mouth, clearing his throat, holding his breath, screwing his eyes shut and hoping nobody sees. He’s hoping he can swallow the sneeze, but it feels like a big one. He can hear footsteps near his head. This is why he shouldn’t even pretend to think about making plans. Joly and he are going to be killed, or else captured and tortured and then killed, and all because of a sneeze. It’s a great joke, and he wishes Joly were awake enough to appreciate it.

When the sneeze comes, it’s not even a single one but five in succession. The sneezes trip over each other, and halfway through he starts laughing because it’s all quite hopeless. Sneezing hurts his chest, and the laughing hurts it even more, but he doesn’t care. Joly begins to stir beneath him from the disturbance, just a movement and a shake of the head, and he could almost be reassured by this sign of life if they weren’t about to die. When he opens his eyes, he’s sure he’ll be staring down the barrel of a National Guardsman’s gun.

Instead, he sees Grantaire, his face pale and blank, and when Grantaire meets his gaze he starts to laugh too. It’s too ridiculous for words. Then Lesgle sobers.

“We need to get out,” he says quietly. “Can you see a passage? Anything?”

It seems to take a great effort on Grantaire’s part to look around him, to start seeing the street.

“Over there,” he says at last, very slowly. “There’s a door. Broken in, I think.”

“Is it safe?” Lesgle asks. Grantaire nods absently.

Getting to his feet is difficult. Instinctively, he takes a deeper breath, and that hurts even more than laughing did. He’s trying to move quickly, before they are spotted, but his body cries out against it. And Grantaire’s almost motionless, as if he were still half-asleep. He stirs a little when Lesgle bends down again to get ahold of Joly.

“Is he..?” asks Grantaire.

“He’s alive,” says Lesgle, and Grantaire nods, like someone who only half understands. But he helps all the same, taking most of Joly’s weight and slinging Joly’s arm over his shoulder while Lesgle props his other side.

Joly straightens his legs a little and murmurs something inaudible.

“Come on Jolllly,” Lesgle whispers. “It’s time to fly.”

 

Grantaire’s rooms are closer, but almost certainly too close. Somehow they make it to Joly’s, even though by the time they’ve reached the front door Lesgle can barely breathe and Joly’s blood has soaked through all of their clothes. Grantaire carries Joly up the stairs as Lesgle makes his own way slowly, taking a break every three steps to lean against the bannister as his head swims and his vision grows red. He gets inside to find Grantaire’s placed Joly on the bed and is sitting on a chair staring at the blank wall opposite.

“We need to bandage him up,” says Lesgle, and Grantaire nods. He does everything Lesgle tells him to do, fetching bandages from the sitting room, water and rags, even some of Joly’s blessed magnets, not that Lesgle has the first idea what to do with them.

“You’re hurt, too,” says Grantaire. It’s not like him to be so miserly with his words. He seems extinguished. He’s sober, that’s clear enough, but not present either, not at all. Lesgle thinks he might be able to put his hand through Grantaire’s body, as one supposedly can with ghosts. But there’s no time for that.

“We need a doctor,” he tells Grantaire. “And there are some other people I need to send messages to. Can you go out and find a gamin to carry them?”

Grantaire nods, again. Together they find clean clothes for Grantaire (he's about Lesgle's size, a little shorter and wider but close enough) and a list of names and addresses. Some will have to wait — there’s no way to contact the other revolutionary groups safely to see how they’ve fared — but he scribbles a note to Musichetta, telling her to wait three days and then come at once, as if that weren’t a contradiction, as if it weren’t a contradiction that he desperately wants her here and also wants her as far away as possible.

 

When Grantaire’s gone he goes to Joly. He’s bleeding into the bandages they tied, terribly pale, but awake. He smiles at Lesgle.

“I need stitches,” he says. “Get a doctor, please. There’s — there’s a list.”

“I found it, love,” says Lesgle, and kisses Joly’s forehead. “Help’s coming. I promise.”

“And you,” says Joly. He looks up at Lesgle. “You?”

“I’m fine,” says Lesgle. “Hurt, but fine.” He sneezes and tries to conceal the pain. “Well, and a bit coldy, but that’s no matter. And we’ll mend you, I promise.”

“Poor Bossuet. Nasty cold.” Joly frowns with pain. “I thought — Grantaire.”

“Grantaire’s been here, and he’s not hurt.” Not quite true, perhaps, but Lesgle doesn’t know how to describe Grantaire’s state. “He’s gone out to send for help. He’ll be back soon.”

 

Grantaire isn’t back soon. He’s out so long that Lesgle’s sure that he’s been taken, that they misjudged things and he’s sent his friend out into the hands of the police. Or else that Grantaire’s gone home, washed his hands of them and of the danger. But eventually, he reappears. His arms are full of bottles.

“I’ve sent messages to a doctor and to your good lady, your muse, your Musichetta,” says Grantaire, his voice already slurred and thick. “I had to pay the gamin double. Prices have risen, it is the law of supply and demand. Today there is a great supply of messages and a shortage of gamin. Those who are alive find their stock has risen in value. It is quite otherwise with the adult population: our market is collapsed.”

Grantaire sets himself on the floor in the corner, back against the wall, and arranges the bottles around him.

“I had thought your doctor might be here by now,” he says, “but I suppose they too are in demand. It is all mathematics, a question of too few or too many, but I don’t understand mathematics at all. I cannot even count, except to say _more_ or _fewer_. Today it is mostly _fewer_. Fewer gamin, fewer men, fewer doctors, even. We ourselves are down one doctor, that I counted — but I am not a mathematician — and one more hangs by a thread. How many are left? I can’t say.”

He’s drinking from an old stone mug Joly keeps crystals in. He must have tipped them out onto the bookshelf. Even for Grantaire, there’s a frightening quickness to the way he pours and drains. It’s methodical, efficient.

Lesgle lies his head down on the pillow next to Joly. He ought to stop Grantaire, but he doesn’t know how to do that, and the pain in his side is growing, the world spinning and bleeding as it had on the stairs. He kicks his feet onto the bed. _Boots,_ he thinks, but the sheets are ruined already. Joly makes a small noise and turns his head.

“Shh,” says Lesgle. They lie side by side, and the world grows quiet except for Grantaire’s murmurations, and then even those fade out.

 

His nose is blocked and his chest aching. He splutters, tries to catch his breath. There’s a stranger in the room, and it takes him a couple of seconds to realise it’s the doctor. Grantaire is standing lopsided, the cup still in his hand.

“I was so sorry to hear that your friends had been in a carriage accident,” says the doctor, pointedly.

“Indeed, indeed,” says Grantaire. “The carriage was altogether the largest I’ve seen, and the most powerful. Full of moving parts, iron parts, a real horror.”

“I don’t need to hear the details, thank you.”

“Just as well; the details would fill you with fear. It is a shame that such carriages still exist. A greater shame, perhaps, for good men to keep flinging themselves in the path of them, but how shall we stop them? You and I, we know well enough to step out of the road when we hear the rumble of a great wheel, but what use is that, when the thing is in motion? An unstoppable mass rolls out of its place, and soon the streets are full of red-soaked straw, of shuttered windows and a stench no nosegay can dissipate, although I’ll confess I half expected you to arrive in a beaked hood like a plague doctor, here to put a chalk mark on our door.”

The doctor comes over to the bed. Lesgle pulls himself up to sitting, and extends a hand.

“I’m sorry about our friend,” he says. “He’s been upset.”

“He’ll put you all at risk, if he can’t keep his mouth shut,” says the doctor. The _me, too_ isn’t spoken, but Lesgle hears it very clearly. Lesgle’s trying to work out if he’s seen him before, maybe talking to Joly once outside the medical school, maybe one time in the street, a man Joly tipped his hat to once and now has trusted with their lives. It’s not too late for them to be betrayed.

“You should look at my — my companion, first,” he says. “He’s the more badly hurt.”

He can’t watch this. He blows his nose - even that hurts - shuffles himself off the bed, and goes over to Grantaire.

“L’Aigle, your beak is red,” says Grantaire.

“Yours is misshapen,” says Lesgle. “A rather more permanent affliction.”

“Ah! Very few afflictions are as permanent as they seem. A few months under the soil, and even the ugliest nose is done away with. There is an elegance to a skull that even the finest arrangement of flesh can scarce hold a candle to. Except for one, perhaps, once — and that —”

Grantaire’s face freezes, and starts to set into the same blank-eyed look again. But he draws his gaze back to the cup with what looks to be deliberate will. He drains it, pours another, drains that one too.

“You’ll be ill, if you drink so fast,” observes Lesgle.

“My dear Laigle, I am never ill. I am, it seems, indestructible. And yet, I will reiterate, nothing is permanent. _Panta rhei_ , wine most of all, absinthe still more so.”

Lesgle sneezes and blows his nose again.

Joly whimpers in pain from something the doctor’s doing, and it’s all Lesgle can do to keep himself from springing over and fighting the man. He coughs, then winces. A fine pair they make. A fine trio, really, with Grantaire getting drunker and drunker, the night rising in his eyes.

Joly cries out again, and the doctor swears. Suddenly Lesgle’s ashamed of his cowardice. He walks over to the bed, trying to look without looking, from the corner of his eye. He sits down, takes Joly’s hands in his, and kisses them. The doctor looks up, possibly in surprise, but then ducks his head again at once. Joly relaxes.

“I’m here,” says Lesgle, trying not to sound afraid. “I’m right here.”

 

Joly manages to wake up enough to listen to the doctor’s summation.

“I’ve stopped all the bleeding,” he says, “and set your shoulder. The, ahem, the metal fragment in the abdomen went deep, but it didn’t hit anything. You were lucky.”

Lesgle shivers.

“We’ll need to keep an eye out, though,” says the doctor, and Joly seems to know what he means, though Lesgle doesn’t. He doesn’t ask; some things don’t need to be understood.

“What about him?” asks Joly, quietly, letting his head fall on Lesgle’s shoulder.

“Just some broken ribs,” says the doctor. “And a cold. Nothing much in themselves, although I don’t like the combination. That’s a piece of bad luck, although hopefully no more than that.”

Joly’s nodding, again. “All right. Will you come by tomorrow?”

“If you think you’ll manage until then?”

“I think so, probably.” Joly smiles. “We all need to sleep.”

The doctor lowers his voice. “I’m concerned about your friend. Does he usually drink so much?”

“We-ell, a lot, but perhaps not so much as this. He’s had a shock.”

The doctor nods, seems about to say something, but stops. He packs up his bag.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he says, and leaves.

Joly nestles into Lesgle. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says quietly. There are things they’re not speaking about, but they can wait. Lesgle holds him, small and very dear, and they are quiet together.

“You need to breathe deeply,” Joly whispers. “Even though it hurts. It’s important.”

They sleep.

 

Lesgle dreams he’s marching. He’s in an army, one of a row of soldiers, moving in step, line upon line of them. The sky is blue, and he is tired, but he knows they have a long way to go. The earth beneath their feet is churned and soft.

The sound of choking wakes him. Joly is curled quietly against his shoulder, his skin dry with heat. And Grantaire is choking in the corner. Lesgle lifts Joly softly and places his head on the pillow, then hurries over to where Grantaire is lying on his back, his throat gurgling, like he’s drowning in six inches of water. He raises Grantaire’s head and body, heavier than Joly’s, floppy and limp, cold where Joly was hot.

“R, you bastard,” he mutters as he scoops the vomit out of Grantaire’s mouth. “I could do without this, you know?”

Grantaire coughs, sputters, then heaves a great breath. His lips are blue. Lesgle props him against the wall, but he slumps unhelpfully. Outside the window, birds have started to sing, although it’s still dark. Lesgle’s conscious suddenly of how alone they are, a little island of three in a great ocean of night, but then he sneezes, which rather undercuts his melancholy, even as it triggers a new burst of pain that makes his eyes flash with a dozen colours. He lies Grantaire carefully on one side, his mouth tipped slightly down. Hoping to heaven that’s enough, he drags himself back to the bed.

 

He’s marching again. His feet hurt. It’s a dull sort of dream; nothing happens. It just goes on and on.

 

“Your breathing’s too shallow.”

He blinks. It’s day. The pain is worse; he sneezes, making it worse still.

“You need to breathe deeply,” says Joly.

“You’re warm,” Lesgle whispers.

“Oh yes,” says Joly, cheerfully. “I’m getting a fever. I thought I would.”

Lesgle frowns. Remembering the night’s events, he looks over at Grantaire, who’s still lying in the corner, his side rising and falling.

“Do you think you could bear to get out of bed to fetch me something?” Joly asks. “You see, I think I should take some belladonna, but it’s in a box on the mantelpiece with all the other homeopathic materia. I’d prefer to ask Grantaire, but he’s so very asleep, I don’t know if we could wake him.”

Lesgle nods. He doesn’t really feel like talking. He doesn’t really feel like moving, but the word _fever_ has an unpleasant sound to it.

The box is where Joly said it would be; he fetches water as well.

“Thank you,” says Joly, who is taking his own pulse and frowning. “You’re a great help, and I’m a trouble, and I’m sorry.”

“I do hope,” says Lesgle, “that you’re not going to apologise every five seconds until you're better. It will drive me to distraction.”

“Of course not,” says Joly. “But you’re hurt, and I wish I could take better care of you. That’s all.”

“It seems to me you’ve been fussing over me quite enough.”

“I mean it, though” says Joly, almost sharply. “If you don’t breathe correctly, the cold will go to your chest.”

“It seems rather more likely,” Lesgle argues, “ _prima facie_ , that breathing deeply would draw the cold _into_ my chest.”

“Well,” says Joly, “It won’t, and that’s that.” He folds his arms.

Lesgle tries a deep breath, experimentally, then immediately regrets it. He shakes his head, and whispers, “The muses have deserted me. Today is not the day for inspiration.”

It’s a silly enough joke, but Joly giggles, which makes Lesgle laugh too; he regrets that, as well.

“Honestly,” he says, “You’re quite the worst companion for a man with broken ribs. Your sneezes and your laugh are both highly contagious.”

“I’m so—”

Lesgle cuts him off with a kiss.

 

It takes frighteningly little time for Joly to become really ill. Within a couple of hours he’s pale and sweating, his hair damp, his eyes black and lost. At first they don’t acknowledge that he’s worsening; it’s just one more thing not to think about, and Lesgle is used to making light of Joly’s illnesses, for Joly’s sake, so it doesn’t seem so strange. But Joly is further and further away, and a time comes when he doesn’t laugh at Lesgle’s jokes, seems barely there at all, and Lesgle can’t push the worry out of his mind any more.

He picks his way over to Grantaire, sneezing and cursing himself for letting things get so bad.

“R,” he says. “R, wake up.”

Grantaire’s limp and clammy. Lesgle shakes him by the arm, first gently and then quite firmly. Grantaire opens his eyes. There’s a moment of confusion before his face settles into an expression of — what is it — disappointment? There’s a bitterness to his tone when he says,

“L’Aigle de Meaux, you don’t seem to know when to let a man be.”

Lesgle wonders if he remembers the events of the previous night, but he’s no time to pry even if he wanted to. “Listen, Grantaire. Joly’s ill. Can you fetch the doctor back? Quickly?”

Grantaire nods.

“And please come back, as soon as you can. I’m not good for very much right now, and he needs someone who is.”

“Then I suggest you look in some other quarter.” Grantaire smells terrible, his sweat sour and heavy, an air of vomit still clinging to him.

“It’s as you said,” says Lesgle. “Supply and demand. We’ve few enough, now.” he swallows. “I can’t do without you, Grantaire. Do you understand?”

They’re not used to sincerity. It isn’t how they talk, but he needs Grantaire to acknowledge him and he can’t ensure that through misdirection.

“Have no worry,” says Grantaire, his voice low. “I made Mithridates’ error, you see. He accustomed himself to poisons, so that when he truly needed them, he found they had no power.”

“Well then, can you get a doctor, and then come back here?”

Grantaire nods.

It’s only when Grantaire has left that Lesgle notices the pain. He finds his way back to the bed, blindly, and reaches out to take Joly’s small, hot hand.

“Breathe,” murmurs Joly. “Breathe.”

 

He can’t remember how long they’ve been on the march. He’s having difficulty thinking of anything but the effort required to take each step. He’s so tired - so very tired - but the column continues its steady advance. His bones ache with weariness; he can hardly hold his eyes open. He stumbles.

His arm is caught before he can fall. It’s the soldier beside him. Lesgle lets himself be pulled upright, although he can’t make out the soldier’s face.

“Where are we going?” he asks, breathless, as they continue to move forward.

“Wrong question,” says the soldier.

“Why are we marching? Who leads this army?”

He hears the smile in the soldier’s voice. “Don’t you know?”

 

“Your doctor’s on his way. I wanted to bring him with me at once, but he didn’t want to be seen walking with me. It’s vanity, sheer vanity. He fears I will make him seem ugly and poorly-dressed, simply by contrast.”

Grantaire is only a little drunk. He also isn’t alone. It takes a while for Lesgle to make out a set of skirts, then a familiar white hand, then a face, and oh, he feels angry.

“She shouldn’t be here,” he says, wanting to shout but unable to speak even at a normal volume without pain. “You shouldn’t have brought her here. It’s not safe, we could still be —”

“Nobody _brought me_ anywhere,” says Musichetta. “I came myself. If anything, I think I deserve credit for bringing Grantaire - he was wandering around half drunk and probably wouldn’t have found his way back, still less made it up the stairs.”

“You underestimate me.” says Grantaire.

“Not as much as this man did, thinking I would stay away until I was fetched for him, like a book from a bookshelf.”

Lesgle sinks back. “I just wanted to keep you safe, my dear.”

“I’m sure you did, but if I’d ordered you two to stay home because I wanted to keep you safe, do you think we wouldn’t still be here all the same, and in the same mess?”

“You’re probably right,” says Lesgle. “Or at least, I don’t have the energy to argue with you, which amounts to the same thing.”

She sighs and goes to Joly. “How is he? Grantaire said he was bad.”

Lesgle shrugs. “He seems it, not that I’ve any way of assessing for myself.”

She touches Joly’s cheek, holds the back of her hand to his forehead. “He’s very feverish.”

Lesgle’s heart sinks; it’s worse, somehow, that someone else has acknowledged it. “It came on so suddenly. One minute we were laughing, and then — and then —”

A fit of coughing overtakes him. It hurts so much he can’t complete the coughs; they stick in his throat. Musichetta sets her lips, dips her handkerchief in the pitcher of water, and wipes Joly’s face and neck. She folds it and leaves it over his forehead, then raises her fists to her eyes. Lesgle wants to hold her, but Joly’s between them.

“I thought you were both dead,” she says. “When I heard that the barricades had fallen, that’s all I could think of. I spent most of yesterday night looking through — oh, you have no idea.”

Lesgle coughs again, but this time he can’t catch his breath at all. And then there’s a new pain, brighter than any before, like a sharp little knife in his lung. He gasps, but breathing’s shockingly painful, and he sinks, and sinks, and drowns.

 

“Breathe.”

The soldier at his side is insistent. Lesgle’s feet are moving without his willing them to. He wants to stop so badly — wants to fall, to sleep.

“Breathe.”

“Whose army is this? Why are we still moving? Who gave the order?”

“Breathe.”

 

Later, he’ll remember Musichetta’s hands on his chest, and being afraid, and falling awake asleep awake asleep, and Joly burning beside him — Joly muttering something he can’t hear — and then, clearer than any other memory, Grantaire as a bent shape in the dark, sitting on a chair with his head in his hands, almost unrecognisable, howling with grief. Whether it’s for those already fallen, or for Joly, or even for Lesgle himself, is something Lesgle doesn’t know.

 

His feet ache. He’s sure he’s supposed to be asleep, right now. He wonders when he’ll ever get to rest.

 

Even as his head starts to clear, it still it takes him a while to realise he isn’t dreaming Grantaire’s new obsession with the newspaper. Whenever he half-opens his eyes Grantaire seems to have one in his hands, and he mutters to himself intermittently as he reads it; Lesgle tries to make out what he’s saying, but he can’t follow the thread. He meets Grantaire’s eyes once, and it seems to him that they’re strangely lit up, a tiny glitter of madness in the corner, and he’s wearing an odd expression.

“It’s important, that’s all,” says Grantaire, as if Lesgle ought to understand what he’s talking about, as if he’s asked a question which Grantaire is answering.

 

“Who commands us?” he asks, although he’s so tired he doesn’t know how he’s still able to talk. “Whose uniform am I wearing?”

The soldier’s face, in profile, is terribly familiar, although he searches for a corresponding name and can’t find it.

“Why does it matter?” asks the soldier. “Why is this question the most important, more than all others?”

It’s a good enough question. “Because,” says Lesgle, “I won’t march without rest or sleep in the service of some tyrant.”

“You’ll — what? Desert? Just stop?”

“Perhaps,” says Lesgle, although he’s in the middle of a wide column of men who move relentlessly. It’s difficult to see a way out. But there always is, he tells himself, there always is. “I have a right to know whose colours I march beneath,” he says.

The soldier turns to him. “Nobody’s.”

“Don’t joke with me,” says Lesgle, breathless, exhausted.

“There are no kings here, and no commanders,” continues the soldier, and Lesgle is quite sure he knows the face from somewhere, quite sure.

“Then why are we moving forward? Where are we going?”

“Breathe,” says the soldier. “You have to breathe.”

 

He wakes to Joly’s face, about six inches from his own. Joly’s eyes are fixed on him intently. He blinks. Joly smiles.

“You’re awake.” he says. “Now, first of all, you need to understand that I’m very cross with you.”

Lesgle reaches out to touch his face. It’s sleepy-warm, no more than that.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I should have listened to you.”

“You’re forgiven.”

“That was fast.”

Joly gets an odd, solemn look on his face.

“I couldn’t bear to be without you, you know.”

Lesgle grins. “Well, I would miss your rabbiting on, so it’s a good job you’re still hare.”

“It was almost more than I could stand,” says Joly, “to see you lion there and unable to help you.”

“Are you sure you’re not still feverish? Because you’re definitely raven again.”

“Come to think of it, I do feel a little horse.”

Lesgle wants to hug Joly very hard, but he doesn’t want to hurt him where he’s still injured. Instead he kisses him, and lets his heart swell with gratitude, for everything, in spite of everything.

“We’ve lost so much,” says Joly, softly, “and I can scarcely believe that you’re here.”

“Who would have thought,” Lesgle muses, “that it would be us three left, when it was all over?”

“We’re going to make a strange little cell of rebels. I suppose we’ll have to find some others to join up with.”

“I suppose.”

He would shield this one small person with his own body forever, if he could. But no, he can’t. He can’t do that.

He pulls himself upright, which is surprisingly bearable, and looks across the room. Musichetta is sleeping in an armchair she must have dragged in from the living room. A book of poems lies face-down on her stomach. She looks worn and soft, her hair undressed, her face more ordinary without the ferocity and magic of her fortune-teller’s eyes. But still so very beautiful. He imagines, as he sometimes likes to, that he can see the old woman she’ll be one day, loving and firm, and full of stories.

He swings his feet onto the ground.

“Careful,” says Joly.

“It’s all right,” he says. “It feels all right.”

And it does. He kisses Joly’s cheek.

“I’ll be back soon,” he says, and stands up.

He walks through to the sitting room, and to his great surprise finds Grantaire at the desk, a pen in his hand and his fingers all inky.

“L’Aigle, my magnificent friend,” says Grantaire. He’s not sober, but not very drunk either; just a little softened about the edges.

“Joly seems well,” says Lesgle.

“He does indeed, doesn’t he? Our doctor friend, who persists in talking nonsense about carriages, is quite pleased with him, and with you, too; I’m sure he’ll be more pleased still to see you walking. They place great stock by perambulation, in the medical profession.”

“To be honest,” says Lesgle, “I was worried you might — not be here. I’m glad to see you are.”

“Oh no,” says Grantaire. “Joly’s rooms are far more comfortable than mine, and I would almost be tempted never to forsake them if it weren’t for the sofa-cushions, which are unbearable, and the library, which is rather more medical than I prefer. How Joly manages to sleep in the same building as such diagrams, I don’t know. Or you, for that matter. But communication is all gone to pieces in Paris these days, and I wanted to see you both recovered. We are not so many, now, that we can afford to lose one without noticing.”

“We never were,” says Lesgle slowly.

Grantaire darts his gaze away, nods.

“What are you writing?”

“It’s nothing, nothing at all. A refutation, a simple thing, something a child could write, to counter a lie so simple-minded a child might have told it.”

“May I read it?”

“Well, you don’t have the context — but perhaps you might look through it for grammatical errors. A legal education lends itself to niceties, while mine, such as it was, was all broad brushstrokes.”

He hands Lesgle the page. Lesgle sits on the sofa — he’s getting tired already — and reads it through, trying not to notice how eagerly Grantaire’s watching his face as he does so.

“This is good,” he says, making sure he doesn’t sound too surprised. “You’re very eloquent about the Republican programme.”

“Oh, I’m a chronicler,” says Grantaire. “Nothing more.”

“Although I think you might cut the second paragraph about his hair. The first is rather beautiful, but the other might be superfluous. But as you say, I don’t have the context.”

Grantaire shrugs, takes the page back.

“We’ll have to find a printer,” says Lesgle. “I don’t know if the old one will have us any more. Still, there’s no harm starting there.”

“I’m no use when it comes to such practicalities.”

“Well, it seems you might be of use as far as writing goes.”

Grantaire waves his hands. “I’m a chronicler,” he repeats, still not meeting Lesgle’s eye.

“You know,” says Lesgle, changing the topic, “I kept dreaming of an army with no general. What do you suppose it means?”

“It means you are no Romantic. Where are your fantastical creatures, your strange realms, your mysteries of the cosmos? The poets would weep. L’Aigle du Meaux has dreamed of an army with no general, and a teapot with no handle, and a bed with no legs.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” He’s suddenly very tired, and lets his head droop onto the much-maligned cushions of the sofa.

“Come,” says Grantaire gently. “You can’t sleep on such a monstrosity.”

Lesgle allows Grantaire to guide him back to the bedroom. Joly’s asleep, but when Lesgle lies down beside him he reaches out a hand to hold. Lesgle takes it.

“You know,” he says to Grantaire. “I truly am very glad that you’re here with us.”

Grantaire sneezes loudly. Joly stirs, holds Lesgle’s hand tighter.

“If this is your cold,” hisses Grantaire. “I will hand you in myself.”

“Shh,” says Lesgle, although Joly’s settling.

“I mean it,” Grantaire whispers. “I will denounce you as a traitor.” He sneezes again.

“You’d better get working on your latest pamphlet,” whispers Lesgle.

“Perfidy! Et tu, Aquila!”

Grantaire beats a retreat. Lesgle hears several more loud sneezes echoing in the corridor.

He turns to Joly, sleeping quietly again. They’ll have to reckon with their dead, together. They’ll have to name them, number their losses, map the new streets in this city of grief. But for now, he’s only conscious of a hand in his, as he sinks into a gentle sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from A. E. Houseman.
> 
>  _Panta rhei_ \- this is a saying of Heraclitus: "Everything flows". Heraclitus' teaching was that all things are in a constant state of flux and change. 
> 
> _Mithridates' error_ \- Mithridates was a king of Persia who was said to have feared being poisoned so much that he used to take small doses of a variety of poisons on a regular basis, in order to accustom himself to them, and render himself unpoisonable. This plan backfired when he was defeated by Pompey and attempted to kill himself using poison... oops.
> 
>  _Et tu, Aquila_ \- "aquila" being the Latin word for "eagle", as any fule kno.


End file.
